Get More Web Traffic

How To SEO To Increase Sells

To start off we need to discuss keywords. Keywords are the terms used in a search engine. The search engine takes the terms that a person enters and returns results. As a store owner, you want to be as high up in the results as possible. The best place to be is the first result or at least land in the top five. This is where most people go when they are searching for a particular item. Let’s say you make baby clothes and sell them on Etsy. A keyword that someone might use when searching would be “homemade baby clothes.” Your goal should be to have your Etsy store land in the top five results on Google every time someone uses that search term.

I’m not saying “homemade baby clothes” would be a good key term to target when optimizing your store. It is just an example. To learn how and where to do keyword research for free you should read James The Just’s article “Part 3: How to do SEO Keyword Research for Free!”

Now that we are past the basics that everyone needs to know for optimizing their Etsy store, let’s get on with the actual optimization.

The store home page and item pages are pretty similar when it comes to SEO. Both can be divided into two parts: the Title and Description. The Title for both the store home page and the item pages is the first thing that a search engine will see when they look at your page for indexing (indexing is how search engines store websites and then bring them forward as results). When a search engine looks at your website it is called crawling. So the search engine will see your title first and will place the most emphasis on it.

The search engines will use the first 30 characters of your title for the title of the search result that show up. So not only do the search engines place a lot of emphasis on the title but it is used to catch people’s attention and send them to your store. So the order of the words that you use in your title can be extremely important as well. If you use your username first, you might not have anything show up in Google that is catchy.

A good rule is to use your main keywords then your username and end with “on Etsy.” An example using “Homemade baby clothes” would be:

“Homemade Organic Baby Clothes made by username on Etsy”

The Italicized words being what would show up on Google.

The difference between the store home page and the item pages here is the type of keywords you would want to include in the title. For your store home page title use keywords that are generic to your store. You sell many types of baby clothes which would include, pants, shirts, etc. The broad terms for your storefront, individual terms for your item pages, pretty much common sense, right?

The second part of the storefront and item pages are the Shop Announcement and Item Descriptions. The difference between the two is again, just the type of keywords you would want to use. How the search engines sees these areas are called the meta description. This is the short description that the search engines show in the search results under the title. The average number of characters that search engines use is 160. So vamp your first 160 characters to say exactly what you sell. After that just be sure to use keywords in natural places.

“These Organic Baby T-Shirts are made from chemical-free grown cotton, handmade with love for children around the world. Clothes are dyed with naturally made colors. Etc.”

The Italicized part being what the search engines will show.

The last page to optimize is the Seller’s Profile. The title is automatically set to “username on Etsy” so we don’t need to worry about that. However, the bio is where the meta description is pulled from. So use the same rules as above. Remember that you are trying to sell products, not tell your life story. So make your bio appeal to buyers that are asking why they should buy from you. Always keep in mind the keywords and use them as much as possible, but naturally.